Senior Governance and Social Accountability Adviser
Profile
Maria Poli is a senior governance and social accountability adviser (consultant) at the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA). She developed the grant application form and supervised the grants’ application and selection processes. Maria has worked extensively on mainstreaming transparency, accountability and participation in Bank’s operations. In the Latin American and Caribbean region she worked for the Public Sector and Social Development departments, from where she pushed for a more integrated approach to governance work, by strategically articulating critical public sector reforms with civil society monitoring efforts, including policies and initiatives for strengthening transparency and access to information, corruption control, formal and informal oversight mechanisms, and political economy analyses. Her work included providing cross-support to transport and roads, water and sanitation, environment, health, education and social protection projects. Before joining the Bank, Maria worked for ten years with CSOs in South America, the Caribbean and Central America doing public policy advocacy on issues of transparency, citizen participation and conflict resolution; she was elected vice-chair of the Social Forum for Transparency (Argentina), and also worked for the public sector in Argentina and the Dominican Republic. Maria is a Fulbright fellow, with a Master in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University, a Postgraduate Degree in Civil Society Studies (Joint University of San Andres and Di Tella University degree, Argentina), and a B.A. in International Relations (Universidad del Salvador).